The 'Very Big' Problem With Nigerian Politics and Politicians - US Consular General

Nigeria - Jeffrey Hawkins, the outgoing U.S. Consular-General, has said Nigeria's democracy is on the right path, but that there's still a long way to go.

In an interview published by Premium Times, Hawkins advised Nigeria to focus on its political party system.

"The reason is because it’s the parties that develop the choices that voters are supposed to be making. And currently in Nigerian politics, often the choices that voters are asked to make are about one person or another. And that’s true in the United States, you’re voting for president you’re looking at the person, his records, his integrity, but you’re also voting based on policies and ideologies.



"And so if you are a really strong Republican in the United States, even if you really, individually, like a Democratic candidate you can’t vote for that person because he doesn’t reflect the policies, and probably not going to implement the policies you’d like to see implemented.

"In Nigeria, I don’t think there’s a lot of thinking that way; it’s ‘so and so is good,’ ‘so and so is not good,’ ‘so and so is from my part of the country,’ ‘so and so is not from my part of the country,’ whatever it is. And that’s kind of the only basis that those decisions get made on and I think that’s a very big problem.

"Whether it is the PDP or APC or APGA, whatever, they all need to work a lot harder at develop‎ing an ideological and policy identity as opposed to a person identity, as opposed to being vehicles for individuals. Because that way people are really making real choices about policy.

"And similarly, I think even (for) the best politicians in Nigeria sometimes it’s much more about what did I do? Did I build these schools? Did I build the flyover here? Something like that. As opposed to do I have a wider construct for this country and the vision for the way forward? You don’t see a lot of that and I think that’s really important.

"Otherwise, all you get is the human beings and Nigerian human beings like American human beings are flawed, imperfect people. Some of them are good, some of them are honest. But if there is nothing else to judge you on you’re going to end up probably with the higher proportion of people that are perhaps yielding the right of the country.